Obamaâ€™s Timely Global Education Fund

But without a focused, strategic intervention - involving both donorreform and service delivery improvements - in the face of the currenteconomic crisis, millions more children are at risk of joining the 75million children worldwide who do not have access to education.

[Global: Commentary]

In an era where “smart power” is needed most to secure America’ssafety and bolster democracy worldwide, President Obama has made abold commitment to funding education globally, with a $2 billiondollar pledge for a Global Fund for Education.

The proposed Global Fund for Education would innovate a new system ofmanaging donor funds with built-in accountability measures andrequired, results-oriented reporting.

Although education is a prioritized Millennium Development Goal, an$11 billion dollar funding gap must be closed in order to meet thegoal for education by 2015.

But without a focused, strategic intervention - involving both donorreform and service delivery improvements - in the face of the currenteconomic crisis, millions more children are at risk of joining the 75million children worldwide who do not have access to education.

When I last visited East Africa, I encountered several hundred out-of-school children while walking through Pabbo, a large, densely crowded, government-created camp in war-shocked northern Uganda. The sounds of crying babies echoed from behind the walls of small mud huts; some hut doors were crafted from shiny United States Agency for International Development (USAID) corn oil cans, children of all ages dashed about.

These were the poorest children, whose lives weren’t touched by donordollars. Due largely to government mismanagement and widespreadcorruption, the much-heralded Universal Primary Education (UPE)program, initiated in 1997 to eliminate primary school fees forprimary education wasn’t a factor in their lives. Many were visiblymalnourished, all were confined to a camp where their parents couldn’tearn money to pay for school uniforms and required school-related fees-- much less feed their families.

The lone school in the camp was a one-room classroom filled tooverflowing, equipped with one chalkboard and no books in sight. Asnoted by the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group, “The (UPE)initiative was not accompanied by sufficient resource planning, anddespite a decade of donor agency support … the basic conditions foreffective learning are not present in many Ugandan villages…“Currently, a woeful 64% of girls in Northern Uganda drop out of school.One might wonder what kind of a future might be awaiting each ofthese children?

Without even basic skills, how will these future adults contribute tocreating solutions for their society and nation?

It has tragically become a normal, every-day occurrence for childrenin developing nations to have little or no access to health services,clean water or education. This is unacceptable; we in the developedcountries must work with those in developing countries to ensure thatthese conditions are reversed.

Writing jointly in a May 5, 2009 Wall Street Journal editorial, formerSecretaries of State Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright caution thatin the face of the current economic crisis “pulling back from globalengagement is not an option. Stability and prosperity go hand in hand,neither is possible in the presence of widespread and extreme poverty.”

And during her Senate confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Clintonstressed that “the best way to advance America’s interest in reducingglobal threats and seizing global opportunities is to design andimplement global solutions.”

The Global Fund for Education is a solution which, with continuedcommitment, will effectively deliver access to education for all theworld’s children. For the sake of those children, President Obama mustcontinue his support for education for all and lead the world inestablishing a multi-lateral Global Fund for Education.

Hellen Otii is a member of RESULTS, an organization dedicating tocreating the public and political will to end hunger and the worstaspects of poverty.